I've beed reading some of the developer's comments on reluctance to implement tabbed playlists, and after thinking about it I think regardless, it REALLY should be in Amarok 2.0.

Here's why:
1)  It wouldn't be too hard to implement, could be an option, and would make SO many users happy.
2)  With playlist queuing and playlist clear/back/forward, it isn't enough nor does it lend itself to organization.  Some people would find it quicker, easier, and more natural to use tabs because they are now mainstream in browsing (both web and directory/files).
3)  Could also be implemented on the directory/tree view panel inside amarok (multiple views open at the same time of a complex directory structure), which would make the functionality complete.

I too hope this gets implemented in Amarok 2.

Charlton

Our playlist browser guy has an idea to have an interface to edit static playlists seperately. I think that solves most of the problems tabbed playlists try to solve without all the added complexity.

..not to mention it would not be easy to implement.

* Ramblurr wonders where non-developers get their ideas about what is difficult and easy to implement

I'm wondering what would be the hard part?

Assuming you have decent code, you have a playlist object, and a player object. Now you create a tabbed-playlist object inheriting from playlist, overriding the play- and remove-notify methods and aggregating the playlist of all tabs. The tabbed playlist will also provide a close method and some proxy methods for the player and the file events (drag/drop).

The tabbed playlist will hold the currently played playlist (or null). Player requests like next or previous will operate on the currently playing list or return end-of-list.

On "play" (double click, ...), the currently displayed playlist is set to be active, and the inherited play method is called for the active tab.

On removing entries, if the affected playlist is not the currently playing list, inhibit calling the inherited method for notifying the player. (If the player notification is not split from removing the list entries, this needs to be done.)

On "close", if the current tab is the playing tab, stop the music (like "clear playlist" and set the playing playlist to null).